I keep getting wants to make onion/tomato/garlic nectar and it won't let me. Which is silly, cos tomato is a fruit.

Each item has a nectar value, btw. I found some data on it in the XML. Maybe it'll be helpful, lemme see if I can go grab it.

Edit: Here we go. Each is Nectar Value/Ancient Nectar Weight. I have no idea what Ancient Nectar Weight is for. Anything not listed has a nectar value of 0 (leading me to believe that the wants to use garlic and whatnot are a bug).

At skill 10, 100% life fruit, or 100% flame fruit will usually turn out to be the best results compared to any combination I've been able to come up with. The above formula makes sense for that. I've been able to make outstanding ones of those, which turn to perfect quality in a short time on a rack

At 10 skill, a 100% life fruit one will give your sim 3 days extra life, and a 100% flame fruit one will give a 5 hour positive moodlet. I did not try and see if say, a 50% life/flame will do the same thing or not, or weaken the reward result (like instead of 5 hours maybe 2 hours). The drinks also have special effects (like the flame one looks like it has fire coming out of the glass)

The above also would explain why 100% apple, and 100% grape usually comes out as bad quality while 100% other fruits do not

I am very curious about the ancient nectar weight though. At the nectar merchant, they have nectar that have been aged by many years, some hundreds and some even thousands. I would like to know how this is even possible, as all my nectar made, even at skill 10 only come out to be on average 26 weeks of age

There's a certain threshhold of percentage over which the life/flame fruit work in nectars, btw. It doesn't have to be 100%.

I think the aging is just something you have to do in-game... Stick it in a rack, forget about it, run through several generations, and it should improve. I'm hoping to get at the actual code behind this stuff soon - right now all I have is XML.

Stumbled across this while dumping the last of my inventory into my nectar machines. I didn't expect much, but I wound up with an unexpected amazing!

Amazing: 60% Cherimola Blan, 40% Apple.

It's not as valuable, however, as the 50/50 Renoit-Apple blend, but it seems to age well. It started out less valuable, but three weeks later it's slightly more valuable. Maybe the"ancient weight" that was listed above might have something to do with how well something ages?

Do you people also did the same stupid thing as I did? I always use the 1,2,3,4 keys on my keyboard to make the time go faster and slower I press them quite a lot. So a couple times when I first started nectar making the thing came up with what to name it. My Nectar's names all became 1,2,3 or 4. I thought I would be able to correct it later. Appearently not, Sigh!

Anyways, I read there were 6 kinds of grapes in the WA game. I've found 3 kind so far. Are there any good recepies with grapes? I like the Idea of making 'wine' instead of nectar!

I think I figured out what 'ancient value' is
I noticed my wines don't all gain value at the same rate. Wines with more grapes age much better/faster.
So, I think the ancient value determins how fast the base value incresses.. Or how much is added per day... something like that.
Also, the 'week' of a wine, is what sim week it was made, Not how 'aged' it is.

I think I figured out what 'ancient value' is
I noticed my wines don't all gain value at the same rate. Wines with more grapes age much better/faster.
So, I think the ancient value determins how fast the base value incresses..

No. Only the base value (value at creation) and the storage determine the value gain. The ancient values only get used when the game instantiates the buyable nectars and the nectars you can find in tombs. Afterwards, the ancient nectars gain value just the same as the nectars made by selectable sims.

I have found with both of my Master Nectar Makers that its a toss up for the best recipe. In an effort to keep a perfect garden you have to keep one of each of the trees going anyway so I just toss any two fruits in the tank to make the nectars, and augment with Life or fire when I dont have enough to put the fruit together. I have two rows of racks in the storage area and fill one row as the other one ages. I take all the stuff out and price it when the new rack is full and put anything back that isnt over 500 dollars. Its usually less than one rack. The storage has two rows of 15 double height diamond faced racks making it 30 of the racks from buy mode, 60 racks in all. When 30 are full I start on the other side, when its full I test the first set and sell anything worth more than $500. I once made over 1000 on a lime+1pomelo combo the next bottle priced at 750 so I stopped selling and lost on that one because the next time the price went to $500. I don't use the consignment store I just hover it over the $ sign and if the price is right I sell it. I stop if the price dips below $500. I always have pure fire and pure life and some 50/50 fire of life combos, but I wont sell them unless the price is high. I have never mixed three fruit. My new nectar makers are not up to lvl 10 so I look at the best price and try to only sell the higher prices, the others go back to age. The Sims I chose to do that are imortal anyway because they have topped out gardening and have life fruit or ambrosia.

I'm going for the 1/9 ; 3/7 ; 5/5 ; 7/3 combinations rather than 2/8 ; 4/6 ; 6/4 ; 8/2...don't ask me why, I simply started with the odd combinations and went way too far to start all over again with the even ones XD I made all possible combinations with the 6 varieties of grapes and the 9 fruits and selected the 4-rated (great) and 5-rated (amazing) combos.

I'll add the remaining combos when I'll go through them, always with the 1/9, 3/7, 5/5, 7/3, 9/1 ratios.
Since the nectar combinatorics mod doesn't work on my sims 3 version, I'm NOT planning to go through 3-fruits combos because It would be a suicide mission and I'd lose my sanity :D

This work has already costed me more than a million simoleon and many many hours of insane gardening. All combos have been discovered with 100% perfect quality food, but of course even normal quality fruits will lead to four and five-stars rated nectars if you follow the ratios above.

Thanks for the breakdowns, I played a new sim using my own advice and now that he is making 2000+ per four bottles of aged nectar, I am ready to tweak recipes. Does anyone have data on Plasma? I bought 100 and used my method of putting the fruit like 3 cherries in and topping it off with Plasma, but I didnt keep a chart. It seems about like Flame and Life.

I'm guessing that the ancient weight is the duration per sim week it takes inside a rack to reach its maximum value or is a modifier for how many days it takes for it to gain x amount of value. I'll be doing some experiments to work this out once my sim is back from holiday.

It adds one day to your remaining time in the current lifestage.
It gives you the "Full Of Life" moodlet
It gives you the "Warm Fuzzies" moodlet
It's worth A LOT, esspecially when finely aged ($7651/bottle after two weeks)

Bad things about it:

Life fruit can be tricky to find (Just use "buydebug" to find it quickly)
Flame Fruit can be tricky to find (See above method)
Cherries can be hard to find (WE'VE BEEN OVER HOW TO GET THESE!)
Limes and Pomegranite aren't indiginous to the same area (Do I even need to say it?)

Keep in mind: This is a special recipe with a special effect, don't waste it on parties, 'cause no one will care what they're drinking!

The problem with the nectars containins life fruit and the like is that often, the life fruit sells better raw than in nectar form. I want to find combinations that sell better in nectar form so it's actually worth doing. In one household I just ended up selling the life fruit, because that meants 10k simoleons as opposed to 500.